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Corn Griddle-cakes
2 cups flour 1/3 cup sugar 1/2 cup corn meal 1½ cups boiling water 1½ tablespoons baking powder 1¼ cups milk 1½ teaspoons salt 1 egg 2 tablespoons melted butter Add meal to boiling water, and boil five minutes; turn into bowl, add milk, and remaining dry ingredients mixed and sifted, then the egg well beaten, and butter. Cook same as other griddle-cakes. 2½ cups flour Rice Griddle-cakes I 1/2 cup cold cooked rice 1 tablespoon baking powder ½ teaspoon salt 1/4 cup sugar 1½ cups milk 1 egg 2 tablespoons melted butter Mix and sift dry ingredients. Work in rice with tips of fingers; add egg well beaten, milk, and butter. Cook same as other griddle-cakes.
A cornmeal mush is cooked first, then thinned and turned into a batter — the extra step is what gives these cakes their tenderness rather than the grittiness of cakes made with dry meal.
- The hinge: cook the meal firstStirring the cornmeal into boiling water and holding it at a simmer five minutes hydrates the starch fully. Skipping it leaves sandy grains in the finished cake, since a few minutes on a griddle will not soften raw meal.
- Let the mush coolAdd the milk to the hot mush and check that the mixture is no more than lukewarm before the beaten egg goes in, or the egg will curdle into threads.
- Corn mealFine or medium yellow or white cornmeal both work. Stone-ground meal has more flavour and will need the full five minutes; degerminated supermarket meal thickens faster.
- Milk quantityThe milk figure in this printing is unclear; 1 1/4 cups is the usual amount for this batter. Judge by consistency — the batter should pour thickly from the spoon and spread slowly on the griddle.
- Baking powder1 1/2 tablespoons is generous by modern standards. A scant tablespoon with 2 cups flour gives plenty of lift without a metallic edge.
- Griddle heatMedium, around 375F on an electric griddle. Cornmeal batters brown faster than plain wheat ones, so the first cake is the test cake.
- RestingTen minutes' rest after mixing lets the meal absorb any remaining liquid and the batter thicken slightly. Thin with a spoonful of milk if it stiffens too far.
- YieldAbout sixteen to eighteen four-inch cakes, enough for four.
Cornmeal griddle-cakes were a New England breakfast staple long before Fannie Farmer set them down, and the method here — scalding the meal into mush before combining it with wheat flour — is the older Indian-meal technique carried into a leavened, chemically raised batter. Nineteenth-century American cookbooks routinely blended cornmeal with wheat flour because the two behave differently: corn brings flavour and colour but no gluten, so wheat supplies the structure. A rice version, built on cold cooked rice, follows immediately.